Monday, 30 December 2013

Donate to the Prisoners' Revolutionary Literature Fund. This is a world full of savage inequality, lies, and the greatest oppressors the world has ever known, parading as the world's greatest liberators. Fucking ludicrous. Over two million locked down in their dungeons. Invading anyone who they feel does not obey them unquestioningly, or at the very least, forcing them into starvation and humiliation. There are many locked down in the belly of the beast who understand only too well what is going on, and for this, the state will never forgive them. Donate to the PRLF.

A World of Savage Inequality:NO MORE!

December 16, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

This world we live in is (to borrow a phrase from author Jonathan Kozol) one of savage inequalities. In the shadow of New York City’s gleaming skyscrapers, nearly half the population lives at or below the poverty line, with tens of thousands of homeless people living on the streets or in squalid, dangerous, vermin-infested “shelters.”

On the other side of the globe, the lives of tens of millions of black South Africans are in many ways no better than they were under apartheid—without access to jobs, or education, slaving in the mines or as maids.

And this is all part of a world where the lives of the majority of humanity are a living hell. Numbers don’t begin to tell the story, but one in three women alive today—1 billion women—will be raped or assaulted in their lifetimes. Ten million children die needlessly each year from preventable causes. Millions of people live in terror of drone attacks, billions are spied on, and the planet faces an environmental emergency.

All this is enforced with savage violence and repression. The heroic hunger strike that involved, at times, over 30,000 prisoners in California shined a light on the psychological and physical torture of endless solitary confinement. In New York City, the demand to end apartheid-style “stop-and-frisk” has been met with the appointment of a police chief with a resume of overseeing thuggish brutality against Blacks and Latinos. An abandoned Detroit takes on the feel of a concentration camp for hundreds of thousands of people.

All this is justified with lies: That billions of people have no access to clean water, or millions are locked in jails because they made “bad choices.” That all of this is the will of an imaginary (and sadistic) god, or an eternal “human nature.” That the best one can do about all this is to pass out a little charity. And, the biggest lie of all—that any alternative to capitalism is off limits—that “communism was tried and failed.”

Under California's three-strikes law, Donald Jones, 42, was sentenced to 76 years to life after being convicted of having a stolen lawnmower and an illegal knife when on parole in 1996. Photo: AP

In the face of the great divisions in the world, and all that lies behind them, both those who catch the most intense kind of hell every day, and those not so directly in the crosshairs of oppression and repression, need to make common cause to say NO MORE. The world does not have to be like this.There is very developed theory and a vision for a radically new society in Bob Avakian’s new synthesis of communism—a world without exploitation and oppression of any kind, and a strategy to make that a reality. People need to know about this.

At a time of year when people reflect on the state of humanity and their relationship to it, make, or step up, your commitment to refuse to accept all this. Two things you can do right now that will actually contribute to REAL change: First: learn more about and get with Bob Avakian’s new synthesis of communism and his leadership of a movement for revolution. Donate generously, and raise big money to get BA Everywhere—from the prison cells to the suburbs and beyond. Second: read, spread, and financially sustain Revolution and revcom.us—where tens of thousands of people around the world connect with this movement for revolution.

In the hellhole prisons of AmeriKKKa, home to over two million people, prisoners—who society calls the "worst of the worst" or "irredeemable"—are standing up and resisting the inhuman conditions in which they are enslaved. And, as they do, they are going through transformation in how they understand the world and their role in changing it.

This past summer, 30,000 prisoners in California asserted their humanity by starting a hunger strike against the torture of long-term solitary confinement. Earlier, a group of prisoners had issued an inspiring statement calling for unity and a halt to hostilities between people of different nationalities in the prisons. After 60 days, the prisoners collectively decided to suspend the hunger strike—but the struggle to end torture continues. Other hunger strikes and political struggles against the dehumanization of American prisons have occurred in other states in recent years.

Within this emerging new generation of rebellious slaves is a significant section of prisoners across the country who are looking for a deeper understanding of why this world is a horror, how we can get out of it, and what it means to be human—and are engaging with the challenging vision and strategy for a radically new, and much better, society and world presented in the weekly Revolution newspaper, in BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian, and in other revolutionary literature sent to them by the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund. Bob Avakian, BA, is the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, and his BAsics is a handbook for revolutionaries in this time, speaking powerfully to the big questions of revolution and human emancipation.

From the notorious "Special Housing Unit" (SHU) at Pelican Bay in Northern California to the notorious Texas prison system to Sing Sing in New York and across the country, the PRLF sends approximately 800 English and Spanish subscriptions of Revolution and has sent over 1,200 copies of BAsics so far to prisoners in 43 states and the District of Columbia.

YOU play a vital role in the PRLF not only continuing this vital work but expanding it to many, many more prisoners (see poem).

DONATE: The existing Revolution subscriptions for prisoners cost $28,000/year. Each copy ofBAsics costs $10. Imagine if the PRLF could significantly increase the number of Revolutionsubscriptions and copies of BAsics making their way to prisoners.

Friday, 27 December 2013

Yesterday marked the 120th anniversary of the birth of Chairman Mao Tsetung, the baddest motherfucker to ever walk the planet. Vilified by conservatives and fake-ass leftists alike, Mao showed the oppressed of the world, through over 27 years of Revolutionary war, philosophical writings, and building a Revolutionary society, how to defeat the oppressors and forge a new world. Unfortunately, this vision was turned back by reactionaries in red clothing,and it's time again to take up the fight and turn these slavemasters back, this time for good. Everywhere the poor and oppressed of the world start fighing back against their oppression, they search for the ways and means to carry on that fight. It is no accident that so many of them find the ideology of Maoism to be the one to take on that battle.

Saturday, 21 December 2013

No, I'm not talking about superman, I'm talking about Joseph Stalin. He was born on Dec.21, 1879. Tyrant, cold-blooded murderer, evil, and all of the other nonsensical epithets have been hurled at this Revolutionary, and plenty more. The trouble is, anarchists and other petty bourgeois radicals take this assessment by the bourgeoisie unquestioningly, and it makes them sound like the editorial board of the new york post. Why the fuck would you disbelieve everything else the bourgeois dogs bark out, but somehow it's okay to accept their verdict on this man, and his era? Revolutionary, badass bankrobber, escapee from prison ( five times!), he got kicked out of a seminary for taking up Revolutionary ideology, sneaking out of the school at night, and organizing meetings with the workers. His mother never did get over the fact that he didn't become a priest.Read this excellent assessment on Stalin . Do yourself a favour and read someone's work who really gives a shit about getting to the fucking truth. And read more here. I'm not asking you to be commie automatons. Just fucking think, instead of being unwitting imperialist dupes, which most of us are, and we don't even fucking realize it. Happy Birthday, J.V.S.

Woman distracted by Facebook walks off a pier in Australia

Woman accidentally walks off pier while checking Facebook on her phone.Remember how your mom used to pester you to "watch where you're going"?

She was right.

And if you're walking along a pier, it's probably even more important that you keep your head up. Especially if you don't know how to swim.

On Monday night, a Taiwanese touristwalked off St. Kilda's Pier in Melbourne, Australia, because she was more concerned with checking Facebook than she was with making sure she didn't end up in the chilly waters below.

Fortunately, a witness saw her fall into the icy Port Phillip Bay and called the police.

The woman floated on her back in the ocean — she later told police that she couldn't swim — while she waited for water police units to come rescue her by speedboat.

The tourist was taken to the hospital for examination but managed to escape her plunge into the ocean without any injuries.

Moral of this story: Don't walk and check Facebook.

"With Facebook, or social media in general as far as we're concerned, if you're anywhere near the water just pay attention," senior Constable Dean Kelly of the state water police told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. "Especially if you can't swim."

Here's an article from the Comrades in the PCR/RCP canada, about the fucking hypocrites and their lying appraisal of Nelson Mandela. Do they praise people fighting repressive governments today? Do they praise anyone even remotely leaning to the left, especially if they dare to pick up a gun? Fuck no. Fuck the politicians and their garbage.

The death of Nelson Mandela has ignited a liberal media campaign wherein the former revolutionary is being celebrated as a man of peace by the same people who, decades ago, would have branded him a terrorist.

The Mandela who led the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC) against the brutal apartheid state of South Africa—who even supported the “necklacing” of collaborators as a necessity—is ignored in favour of the jovial statesman who negotiated a smooth transition from apartheid to liberal democracy. Indeed, in a CBC special dedicated to the life of Mandela, one commentator praised Mandela for abandoning his “extremism” and replacing his revolutionary zeal with “pragmatism.”

Hence, the liberal media remembers only the Mandela who sold-out his revolutionary past and, in this selling out, managed South Africa’s transition from settler-colonialism to neo-colonialism with the ANC managing imperialist exploitation.

Although the legal apparatus of apartheid was obliterated, all of the economic aspects of that horrendous regime remain: land and wealth remains primarily in the hands of the Afrikaaner population, with only 7% being redistributed, as does much political power. This is the reality of Mandela’s “pragmatism”… and attempting to end the abject poverty and continued exploitation of those who suffered under apartheid is tantamount to extremism.

Therefore, in the midst of this liberal celebration of Mandela-the-statesman, we should remember the other Nelson Mandela who died in the early 1990s when the ANC capitulated to imperialism. This “extreme” Mandela, along with the ANC of that period, proved that revolutionary violence was, in actual fact, the only thing that could end apartheid and, indeed, was what forced the apartheid state into negotiations. This Mandela spoke of socialism and land reforms—apparently more “extreme” than the brutality of imperialist domination that murders untold millions each year.

So let us mourn the revolutionary Mandela, our Mandela, and not the man he became. Let us recall the words that were once a rallying cry for the ANC when it was revolutionary and socialist movement: Amandla! Awethu! Power is ours.

Monday, 16 December 2013

James moore, one of "our" elected officials, is a fucking lying pig. Surprise, surprise. He is now backtracking and attempting some fucking half-assed apology due to an honest opinion of his being called out for the asshole shit that it is. He claimed that it wasn't the job of the federal government to address child poverty. Maybe he's right. All of these assholes only have helping their millionaire sponsors in mind, and child poverty comes in near the bottom of the priority list. But that's all the more reason why all of this crap has to go. Fuck james moore and all of those motherfuckers.

With that throwaway line at the end of a brief encounter with a B.C. radio reporter, federal Conservative cabinet minister and potential leadership aspirant James Moore triggered a wave of online criticism that he at first rebuffed, saying he was misquoted.

But a day later, following calls from child poverty advocates and the Official Opposition to apologize, Moore issued an abject apology and ducked requests for interviews.

“In response to a question from a reporter last week, I made an insensitive comment that I deeply regret. I apologize,” Moore wrote on his website.

More Video

Video:PM announces new scholarships to honour Mandela

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“Caring for each other is a Canadian ethic that I strongly believe in — always have and always will. Of course poverty is an issue that concerns me, and concerns all Canadians. All levels of government, indeed all members of our society, have a responsibility to be compassionate and care for those in need.

“Great work has been done to tackle poverty and the challenges associated with poverty. And while more work is needed, I know the cause of fighting poverty is not helped by comments like those I made last week. For that, I am sorry.”

Moore’s initial comment came at the end of a response to a News 1130 radio reporter who asked how Ottawa plans to address the record high rate of child poverty in the province.

Reporter Sara Norman asked the Conservative government’s senior political minister for British Columbia: “Child poverty in B.C. is at an all-time high; what does the federal government plan to do about that?”

Moore’s reply was at once a dismissal of the federal constitutional responsibility for front line child poverty reduction services, a challenge of how child poverty is statistically measured, and a recitation of the Conservative government’s oft-repeated talking points on its economic performance.

Yet when the reporter put to him: “There’s still kids going to school hungry,” Moore delivered a succinct reply that appeared to shrug off the federal government’s role.

“Well, obviously nobody wants kids to go to school hungry. Certainly we want to make sure that kids go to school full bellied, but is that always the government’s job to be there to serve people their breakfast? Empowering families with more power and resources so that they can feed their own children is, I think, a good thing. Is it my job to feed my neighbour’s child? I don’t think so.”

The reporter posted her story on the station’s website Sunday and linked it on Twitter, saying: “Federal Minister of Industry and Port Moody-Westwood-Coquitlam MP says #childpoverty not Ottawa’s problem.”

Moore is a fiscal conservative but is identified as a socially progressive Conservative. He holds an economic portfolio as industry minister, and is lead on Ottawa’scommunications policy, however his online handling of the skirmish also drew fire.

Moore objected on Twitter that he’d been taken out of context, calling the story “quite ridiculous,” declining calls to apologize.

The reporter countered Moore’s claim: “It's on tape and taken directly in context. I asked the questions about child poverty, those were the answers.” The radio station posted raw audio of the interview.

Moore deleted his comments from his Twitter account but such postings are retained by online tracking sites.

Adrienne Montani, provincial co-ordinator of First Call-B.C. Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition, said in an interview Monday that Moore was “flippant and dismissive.”

“I was disappointed that he doesn’t seem to understand his role, as a member of the federal cabinet, that he does have a role to feed his neighbour’s children, he’s not just a neighbour; there’s personal responsibility and there’s an elected responsibility.”

Montani said along with provinces, the federal government has responsibility to develop policies to address child poverty, by raising the national child tax benefit, investing more in affordable social housing, child care programs, post-secondary education and training. It could boost wages, and support for refugees, aboriginal education and child welfare, she said.

“There is lots of scope for federal intervention,” she said.

Ontario’s minister of children and youth services weighed in too, saying reducing child poverty through income support, investments in health care, education, and employment opportunities for all is “a goal that should be the focus of all levels of government.”

“This should not only be a provincial priority, but should be federal as well,” said Teresa Piruzza in a statement emailed to the Star. “It is only by working together that we can work towards the elimination of poverty across Ontario and Canada.”

NDP critic Jinny Sims on Monday released a statement demanding Moore apologize for the “callous” and “heartless” remarks.

By Monday afternoon, the wave criticism that saw #MooreChristmas trending on Twitter prompted the minister to completely reverse his position.

Saturday, 14 December 2013

I know that when I go off on my tirades about the u.s. government, the kkkanadian government, and the majority of the self-proclaimed "free world", people think I am generalizing too much. Well, fuck them. What happens in the u.s is what happens in what they call the freest society on this greasy, rotting planet. They think they have a right to dictate to everyone else how to run their societies. School shootings, cops killing kids in the street, kids being on the street, rape, invasions of other countries and killing their civilians, etc., and so fucking on. These assholes have absolutely no moral ground on which to stand. This also happened to someone in their fucking country...

Standing with Sasha and Against Bigotry

December 1, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

By a reader in the San Francisco, Bay Area

Oakland, California. On a public bus ride home from high school one afternoon in early November, Luke “Sasha” Fleischman was catching a little nap. Sasha woke up on fire! Was there a terrible accident with the fuel tank of the bus rupturing and spilling flammable liquid through the bus which subsequently lighted—a terrible disaster? No. Another human being set the sleeping 18-year-old Sasha on fire, then got off the bus and ran. Sasha struggled to put out the fire but wasn’t able to. Passengers rushed to help and put out the fire, saving Sasha’s life. Sasha’s skirt had been set ablaze which caused second-and third-degree burns to Sasha’s legs which means months of surgery, skin grafts, etc. Sasha was just released from the hospital this past week and will continue to need treatment for some time.

Students at Maybeck High School in Berkeley wear skirts on Friday Nov. 8, 2013 to support 18-year-old classmate Luke "Sasha" Fleischman, who was set on fire by another student. Photo: AP/Bay Area News Group, Doug Oakley)

There was an immediate outpouring of support for Sasha from Sasha’s friends and the community around Maybeck High School in Berkeley, California where Sasha is a senior. Maybeck is a small, private, college preparatory high school that tries to make room for all forms of diversity in its student body. Support also came from the school that Sasha’s alleged attacker attends, Oakland High School. OHS is the oldest public high school in Oakland, with a student body that is 96% Black, Latino, and Asian. Some of the students come from middle class families and many more come from the poorer neighborhoods of such as East Oakland and the Fruitvale district. Students there are very familiar with police brutality and at times have walked out to protest murders by the police, such as the murder of Oscar Grant and others. Some students also walked out in the past in protest against the war in Iraq.

Sasha got some tentative support from the family of the alleged attacker, too. But up to this point there has been little discussion of Sasha’s attacker’s motivation. Only a short police statement saying that the attacker admitted to police that he is homophobic, which the youth’s attorney now says was coerced from his client.

Where did this idea come from that anyone who doesn’t appear “normal” should be attacked? Because he/she doesn’t appear in step with the traditional norms of society, he/she should be burned? We don’t know the motivation of the high school student who attacked Sasha. But we do know that attacks on gay and transgender people (LGBT in general) are increasing, including murder.*

A San Francisco Chronicle article quoted Carolyn Laub, executive director of the Gay Straight Alliance Network saying that “I was horrified by what Sasha had gone through, but I was heartened by the response...so I was struck by the dissonance. It’s that jarring contrast between support and rejection that presents a larger message about where we are as a culture.” The article went on to say, “few would dispute that gender nonconformity is taking a more prominent place in culture. More than 60 percent of public high schools in California have gay-straight alliance clubs on campus...”

In a dramatic and wonderfully defiant action, pretty much the whole student body of Maybeck HS (including faculty and staff) had a “Skirts for Sasha” day, which was colorful, stylish, and lots of fun. Oakland HS students have raised over $1,300 for Sasha, are wearing “NO H8” buttons and had made “Be Yourself” signs. In addition, they have held speak outs, and an anti-bullying assembly was held at the school. Students at Maybeck HS, Oakland HS and others organized a “Stroll for Sasha” march originating at Oakland HS and following the route of the 57 bus which Sasha was riding when attacked. These are great developments and need to be applauded, actively supported—and built on.

*See report of National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs 2012, page 58 and elsewhere.

Friday, 13 December 2013

Once again, the fucking amerikkkan drones have killed civilians on their way to a wedding. This time it happened in Yemen, whose government just can't seem to lick the yankees' boots fast enough. Of course, some media hacks are saying it was a fucking "accident", while others are saying that this is some sort of Al-Qaeda "stronghold". Either way, how many more of these "mishaps" are the people willing to take? Probably not too many. The asshole imperialists march into wherever the fuck they want, killing whoever they want to kill, and declare themselves the fucking "good guys". And this is exactly why they are losing their grip on their various fucking "interests" all over the world, and why they're losing the many fucked-up wars they seem to find impossible to resist starting. The laws of imperialism and profits at the expense of everything else is going to be their end. Good.

Air strike kills 15 civilians in Yemen by mistake: officials

(Reuters) - Fifteen people on their way to a wedding in Yemen were killed in an air strike after their party was mistaken for an al Qaeda convoy, local security officials said on Thursday.

The officials did not identify the plane in the strike in central al-Bayda province, but tribal and local media sources said that it was a drone.

"An air strike missed its target and hit a wedding car convoy, ten people were killed immediately and another five who were injured died after being admitted to the hospital," one security official said.

Five more people were injured, the officials said.

The United States has stepped up drone strikes as part of a campaign against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), regarded by Washington as the most active wing of the militant network.

Yemen, AQAP's main stronghold, is among a handful of countries where the United States acknowledges using drones, although it does not comment on the practice.

Human Rights Watch said in a detailed report in August that U.S. missile strikes, including armed drone attacks, have killed dozens of civilians in Yemen.

Stabilizing the country, which is also struggling with southern separatists and northern rebels, is an international priority due to fears of disorder in a state that flanks top oil producer Saudi Arabia and major shipping lanes.

On Monday, missiles fired from a U.S. drone killed at least three people travelling in a car in eastern Yemen.

Thursday, 12 December 2013

As the imbecilic world leaders continue to heap praise on Nelson Mandela, and by extension, themselves, let me remind you of how fucking hypocritical this whole fucking thing is. The u.s.a. supported the aparheid regime, yes, even at the time the worst atrocities were happening, and israel helped train their security forces on how best to torture, kill, and otherwise harrass anyone who dissented from the prevailing status quo, and some of them were indeed children. Of course, the israeli security forces continue to practice the same techniques today, and once again, many are children and youth. Harper and obama are fucking liars and idiots.

Apartheid in South Africa: Decades of Serving the U.S. Empire

December 9, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

In the barrage of self-congratulatory eulogies for Nelson Mandela, spokesmen and ideologues for the rulers of the United States have conveniently whited out two things:

The ghastly horrors of the apartheid system that enslaved the black people (and other non-white peoples) in South Africa from 1948 until the early 1990s; and

The fact that the apartheid system was backed by, and served the interests of the rulers of the United States all this time—a source of massive profits and a strategic bulwark in their global empire.

Oh yes. They drag out their old quotes, issued over the years, deploring (in words) some of the most egregious crimes of the apartheid regime. But they cover up the depths of the horrors. And they lie about the reality that from 1948 the U.S. provided—sometimes indirectly, sometimes directly—the money, the guns, the “moral” cover, and the diplomatic endorsement that enabled all those crimes.

And they backed the apartheid regime to the hilt not because they lost touch with their basic core values, but as an expression of them. Most fundamentally, they backed the crimes of apartheid because of the essential nature of this global system of capitalism-imperialism.

The Reality of Apartheid

October 1976, Soweto, South Africa. Youth rally after the funeral of a 16-year-old black student, Dumisani Mbatha, who died in jail in the hands of the police. Photo: AP

It would take libraries and libraries to begin to tell the story of the horrors inflicted on the black people of South Africa by colonialism and imperialism—even just through the apartheid era that lasted from 1948 until 1994.

From the time of their arrival in the mid-1600s, through wars and massacres, the white settlers stole nearly all the usable land in South Africa. Nearly 90 percent of the land in South Africa was reserved for whites, while Africans—the vast majority of the population—were locked down in “Bantustans”—essentially mass concentration camps.

South Africa’s rich mineral resources including diamonds and gold produced billions in profits for global capitalism-imperialism, and made it possible for the “American way of life” to include the purchase of gold and diamond jewelry in shopping malls. But the mines were a hellish horror for the black people enslaved in them. Hundreds of thousands of black South Africans dug gold and diamonds out of the mines, without earning enough to feed and clothe their families. Miners spent nine to eleven months away from home, unable to see their families who were confined by pass laws to Bantustans. They lived in prison-like barracks, often without the most basic necessities like showers.

Black South Africans were driven into the cities in search of jobs, or worked on white-owned farms or in the mines to survive. Under “pass laws,” black South Africans were only allowed to travel from these Bantustans to work or for short trips. A black person caught without a pass faced severe consequences.

In South Africa after World War 2, apartheid further institutionalized and intensified vicious oppression of black (and other non-white) South Africans, who were locked down in prison-like "Bantustans," without the most basic necessities of life (like clean water or decent shelter). They were treated as non-humans, subject to fascist "pass laws" that governed their every movement. Above, black South Africans on line at the government office in 1960 to get new passbooks. Photo: AP

South Africa enforced a whole series of white supremacist laws. Marriages between white people and people of other races were against the law under apartheid. Laws limited the majority black population to owning a maximum of 13 percent of the land. The hated “Group Areas Act” confined blacks (and other non-whites) to officially demarcated ghettos. No representation for black people was allowed in South Africa’s governing parliament, and multi-racial political parties were against the law.

Black people driven to work in the cities lived in terrible conditions, with inadequate housing, poor health and transport services, and often no electricity. Those black people with “passes” to work in the cities were forced into squalid slums, often without even electricity. Women who came to live with their partners in the cities usually did so without passes, living the precarious lives of “illegals.”

The Sharpeville Massacre

The black people of South Africa never stopped struggling against their oppression, and the regime never stopped attacking them with whips, jailings, and guns.

From 1960 to 1982, three million non-white South Africans were forcibly and violently removed from their homes and relocated in “group areas” designed for them. Thousands of black South Africans were forcibly removed to the city of Sharpeville (originally "Sharpe Native Township"). Deep in the interior of northern South Africa, and removed from access to regional factory towns, conditions for blacks in Sharpeville were abysmal—14 homes shared one water tap and there were two bathing complexes in the entire city.

As in any mass struggle, there were different trends and political movements that opposed apartheid in South Africa. One was Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC). A more radical trend was the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). On March 21, 1960, the PAC organized the people relocated to Sharpeville to burn the hated passbooks used to enforce the pass laws. South African police opened fire on the crowd. Sixty-nine black people were killed and 178 wounded by police during the violence.

The Sharpeville Massacre ignited a powerful wave of struggle throughout South Africa against apartheid. And throughout the world, people protested their governments’ support for South Africa. The movement for “divestment,” an end to investment in South Africa, began to grow.

Blood on the Hands of the United States

How did the rulers of the U.S. respond as the world reacted with outrage and horror to the Sharpeville Massacre, and emerging exposure of the crimes of apartheid? With diplomatic endorsements of the regime, and economic backing.

March 1986, University of California at Berkeley students build shanties blockading entrances to California Hall on campus demanding the university divest from South Africa. Photo: AP

As foreign investors became nervous in the wake of the Sharpeville Massacre, outbreaks of struggle and rebellion across South Africa, and an emerging worldwide movement of protest against apartheid, a consortium of 10 banks led by Chase Manhattan provided South Africa with $40 million in rescue loans. The money stabilized the regime and sent a signal to the “international community” (of global oppressors and exploiters) that the U.S. imperialists were standing behind apartheid’s most appalling crimes.

As a matter of fact, from the start of apartheid to the mid-1980s and even beyond, the U.S. actively blocked any serious international sanctions or moves to isolate the South African regime, especially any sanctions that would impinge on the regime’s ability to massacre the black people within its borders, and invade and terrorize its neighbors.

While building a record of covering their asses with face-saving calls for reforming apartheid, the U.S. consistently blocked moves in the UN to impose economic sanctions or arms embargoes against South Africa. In 1963, U.S. ambassador to the UN Adlai E. Stevenson opposed a mandatory arms embargo against South Africa.

In 1974, the UN General Assembly voted 91 to 22 to reject South Africa's membership credentials, but the U.S. (and its imperialist partners the UK and France) vetoed a Security Council resolution to expel South Africa.

The Murder of Stephen Biko

Stephen Biko emerged as an inspiring leader of resistance to apartheid in the 1970s, and beyond that was a founder of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) that opposed the oppression of black people in South Africa in any form. Like every serious political, cultural, and intellectual challenge to the regime, Biko was “banned”— not allowed to speak to more than one person at a time or to speak in public, restricted to one district, not allowed to write publicly or speak with the media. It was illegal to quote anything Biko said, including speeches or simple conversations.

In spite of this, Stephen Biko and the BCM organized resistance to apartheid across the country, including the Soweto Uprising of June 16, 1976. Students from numerous Sowetan schools began to protest in the streets of Soweto in response to being forced to study in Afrikaans, the language of the dominant section of white settlers in South Africa. Tens of thousands went into the streets. The regime responded with brutality that shocked the world. Police opened fire on the students, killing a still untotaled number of unarmed protesters—estimates of the dead range from 176 to 700.

After Soweto, the regime went after Biko with renewed fury. They arrested him on August 18, 1977, under South Africa’s “Terrorism Act No 83 of 1967,” tortured him, and beat him to death.

Biko’s death served to further intensify and radicalize the struggle in South Africa, and around the world. (For more on this, see Donald Woods’ book, Biko, Henry Holt publishers, New York, 1987, as well as the movie Cry Freedom.) On October 7, 2003, the South African justice ministry announced that the five policemen accused of killing Biko would not be prosecuted because the time limit for prosecution had elapsed and because of insufficient evidence.

A Strategic Outpost for the U.S. Empire

Even as the apartheid regime grew more exposed and isolated, the rulers of the United States continued to back it—albeit at times covertly, but often overtly.

In the context of the extreme isolation of the apartheid regime, the “human rights” president, Jimmy Carter, appointed Andrew Young, a Black man associated with the civil rights movement, as ambassador to the UN and called for reform in South Africa. But in 1977, the U.S. abstained from a UN General Assembly resolution recommending an oil embargo against South Africa, effectively blocking the embargo.

Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, was more overt about U.S. sympathies, interests and objectives, declaring that the U.S. should work "with a friendly nation like South Africa" that "strategically is essential to the free world…"

Reagan’s statement—coming from the mouth of an unabashed cheerleader for everything the United States has always really stood for, tells you much of what you need to know about the essence of what the U.S. brings to the world. U.S. imperialism has always defined the “free world” as including many of the most brutal, depraved, oppressive regimes on earth, from the genocidal mass murderer Rios Montt in Guatemala to the white supremacist rulers of South Africa.

And throughout this period, even when the U.S. took formal positions opposing apartheid in international forums, or when it was unable to block diplomatic, economic or military sanctions, it arranged for its closest allies and puppets to keep the oil and arms flowing into South Africa. When the Organization of Arab Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OAPEC) imposed an oil embargo on South Africa in 1973, the Shah of Iran, a U.S. puppet, stepped in to become South Africa's major oil supplier.

The roots of the tight bonds between the rulers of the U.S. and apartheid go even deeper than the fact that the U.S. ruling class is racist to the core and saw the rulers of South Africa as “kin”—though they are, and did!

At the very time South Africa was viewed with outrage by people all around the world, and carrying out the most heinous crimes, justified with the most Nazi-like white supremacist immorality, the United States needed South Africa.

The deep ties between the U.S. and the apartheid regime were rooted in the reality that the U.S. presides over a worldwide system of imperialism which feeds, and must feed, vampire-like off the blood-soaked superprofits it extracts from Asia, Africa and Latin America, and the apartheid regime was, for a time, a key pillar of that—including as military enforcer for the interests of the U.S. in southern Africa.

By the mid-70s, independence movements backed by the Soviet Union had come to power in the former Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique—countries in southern Africa with large borders and with strategic resources of their own (like Angola’s large oil reserves). The consolidation of a bloc of stable southern African countries aligned with the Soviet Union was seen by the rulers of the U.S. as an intolerable challenge to their empire.

The U.S., working through South Africa, set up or adopted and enlisted some of the most depraved terrorist groups in modern history to wage terrible wars against these new regimes. And South Africa itself continued to forcibly occupy what is today the country of Namibia, where a tiny strata of white settlers had seized over 99 percent of all the usable land.

The wars launched by these U.S./South African proxies, UNITA in Angola and RENAMO in Mozambique, resulted in a regional reign of death and terror. From 1977 to 1992, an estimated one million people died in the war in Mozambique, and the war in Angola claimed even more lives. Millions more in each country were displaced.

The bloody hands of the South African military were all over this slaughter, including training of these terrorist forces, direct military intervention, and funding. And through a combination of aid to South Africa, open aid, and CIA secret funding, the U.S. orchestrated, sponsored and enabled these two decades of horrors. The U.S. openly aided UNITA, and RENAMO shared an office address in Washington, D.C. with the reactionary Heritage Foundation. In 1982, the U.S. urged the International Monetary Fund to grant South Africa $1.1 billion in credit, an amount that happened to be equal to the increase in South African military expenditure from 1980 to 1982.

Through this entire period, the U.S. arranged for its allies, especially Israel, to train the South African military, provide weapons technology, and train “intelligence” agencies in torture. In 1981, the South African military used Israeli drones in combat against Angola. That same year, Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon spent 10 days on the ground with South African forces in Namibia. Most Israeli aid to the apartheid regime was covert, including significant steps by Israel to provide South Africa with nuclear weapons.

The End of Apartheid But Not the End of U.S. Crimes

In 1972, the “Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act” was introduced in the U.S. Congress, which would have banned direct flights to the U.S. by South African airlines, and imposed significant economic sanctions.

It was 14 years before that act passed—over the veto of Ronald Reagan. By the mid-1980s, the U.S., through unofficial channels, had begun negotiations with the imprisoned Nelson Mandela (even as they kept him on their “Terrorist Watch List” until 2008!). By the late 1980s, the U.S. had begun the process of overseeing the transition from apartheid to new forms of oppression in South Africa. But that was not because the rulers of the U.S. suddenly grew a conscience.

There was a huge international movement against apartheid. Some of the most influential figures in music came together in Artists United Against Apartheid, and students on campuses in every part of the world were confronting authorities over their shameful complicity with the crimes of the South African regime.

So the indomitable struggle of the people of South Africa and the global struggle against apartheid were significant factors in the U.S. change of tactics vis-à-vis South Africa.

The other defining factor was the collapse of the Soviet Union. That major geopolitical event created new freedom for the U.S. to repackage the forms of oppression in South Africa, and to negotiate new relationships (on the basis of decades of waging massive terrorist attacks) with the governments in Angola and Mozambique, and the independence forces in Namibia.

With the collapse of its Soviet rivals, and in a move to stabilize South Africa, the U.S. orchestrated a transition to new forms of oppression in South Africa. It did so only after getting assurances that the country would continue to serve the U.S. empire.

Formal apartheid was ended in 1994. Nelson Mandela was released from jail and became the first black president of South Africa. The obscene, overt segregation against black and other non-white peoples had ended. But the basic situation for the vast majority of black people was not improved, and the fundamental causes of their exploitation and oppression remain.

What the U.S. Brings to the World… Really

Now, in the wake of the death of Nelson Mandela, the U.S. ruling class and their mouthpieces drag out their old meaningless, face-saving diplomatic calls for reform of apartheid over the years, and initiatives they took to explore what kind of deals they could make with Nelson Mandela and the ANC, all to portray themselves as longtime (if occasionally flawed) opponents of apartheid, and a powerful force for the ideals of freedom and democracy around the world.

These are lies. From the imposition of apartheid in 1948, to the moment they decided different forms of oppression would better serve their interests in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rulers of the U.S. were the main prop of apartheid. Sometimes overtly—as when U.S. banks moved to bail out South Africa in the wake of the Sharpeville Massacre. Sometimes covertly—as when oil producing Arab countries refused to send oil to South Africa and the U.S. arranged for its puppet the Shah of Iran to fill the gas tanks of the South African bulldozers, bombers, and armored personnel carriers that spread terror from the black townships of South Africa to the country of Namibia. When it was too awkward to openly send military advisors and weapons, the U.S. subcontracted the job to Israel.

But the basic truth is that the immoral, bloody reign of apartheid was a source of vast profits and a strategic military outpost for U.S. imperialism, and its existence is hard to imagine without the foundational backing it got from the U.S.

And none of this is a “blemish” on the record or nature of U.S. imperialism. It is a profound example of the essence of what it is the United States brings to the world.